I Don't Scare

I Don't Scare
Directed by	Isadore Sparber
Produced by	Seymour Kneitel Isadore Sparber
Written by	Jack Mercer
Starring	Jack Mercer Mae Questel Jackson Beck
Music by	Winston Sharples
Animation by	Tom Johnson Frank Endres Robert Owen
Studio	Famous Studios
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	November 16, 1956
Running time	6:00
Country	USA
Language	English
Preceded by	Parlez Vous Woo
Followed by	A Haul in One
IMDb profile

I Don't Scare is a Popeye the Sailor theatrical animated short produced by Famous Studios (the original animation unit of Paramount Pictures) and released on November 16, 1956.

Popeye enters a telephone booth in order to call Olive Oyl and invite her on a date, but Bluto pulls him out of the booth and tosses him aside. Bluto then gets in to make the call, but he gets the phone pulled out of the booth on him by Popeye, who then answers when Olive picks up. After Olive accepts Popeye's invitation, Bluto demands that the sailor give back the phone, which he does - by slamming it into Bluto's face.

Popeye soon arrives at Olive's house and steps inside to call on her. Olive, in the middle of preparing for the date, tells Popeye she'll be ready in a minute. Bluto arrives moments later and sees Olive come from her bedroom, then stop to pick up a pin from the floor as she recites "See a pin and pick it up, and all the day you'll have good luck." Seeing that Olive is superstitious, the opportunistic Bluto notices her wall calendar and changes it to mark "Friday the 13th" to take advantage of her gullibility. Upon noticing the date, Olive becomes reluctant to go out with Popeye, who argues against "stupid-stitions" (as he calls them) and attempts to prove his point by opening an umbrella inside the house. When Popeye gets Olive to hold the umbrella, Bluto pops in again and gets it to touch a light socket, causing Olive to be electrocuted and thrust by the electrical charge into her piano. A displeased Olive, not realizing that Bluto was responsible for the prank, blames Popeye for what happened to her.

Next, Bluto lets a black cat into the house, which causes Olive to freak out and run away when she sees it. The skeptical Popeye believes it is harmless and tries to allay Olive's fears about black cats, but its attempt on Olive's goldfish ends with the goldfish bowl over her head by accident when Popeye gets the bowl out of the way. After Popeye sends the cat on its way by giving it directions to a nearby fish market, he then takes a mirror to show Olive how silly she looks with the goldfish bowl on her head. Upon seeing this from outside, Bluto pulls another prank by pulling the rug out from under Popeye's feet and making him break the mirror over Olive's head. After telling him that breaking a mirror means seven years of bad luck, Olive kicks Popeye out of the house and tells him she never wants to see him again. Bluto then comes along and reveals to Popeye the fact that it is really Thursday the 12th, and his offer to go on a date with Olive is accepted after he tells her the true date (while conveniently omitting the pranks he pulled to play on her superstitious nature), causing Popeye to twirl his pipe in anger as he discovers his rival's treachery.

Popeye quickly plans his revenge by planting a "lucky" horseshoe to magnet Bluto away and trap him under a ladder, which Popeye then points out to him is bad luck. Bluto loses it and attempts to run away with the end of the ladder stuck around his neck, but Popeye grabs the ladder and uses it to plant his foe onto a crate of dynamite. Taking advantage of Bluto's own superstitious nature, Popeye also mimics the unlucky move of using a single match to light three cigars - or three of the dynamite sticks, in this case. Bluto is sent flying when the dynamite explodes, then Popeye, after eating his spinach, breaks the bully's fall with a mighty punch that sends him crashing into a coin-operated fortune-telling machine/weight scale, which deposits a card that announces to the defeated Bluto: "Today is your lucky day!". As Popeye and Olive walk off and he continues explaining to her about the folly of superstitions, she laughs at his own display of superstition when he realizes that they passed on either side of a telephone pole and he goes back around Olive's side of the pole while saying "bread and butter".

• Although he is not shown to do so due to an abrupt edit, Popeye is presumed to have eaten his spinach while Bluto goes flying upward, as he is shown immediately after the cut as he forms the bicep in his right arm into the number 13, which could only have happened by his eating spinach.

• I Don't Scare is one of a number of Famous Studios-produced Popeye the Sailor cartoons in the public domain in the United States.

• I Don't Scare public domain cartoon at YouTube